God’s Love and Christian Life - Part 3

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

 I once heard a fellow Christian say, “You can’t live in fear and faith at the same time.” Why? Because true faith in God’s grace, mercy, and love should give us the incredible confidence of fearing nothing except offending God. Being human and thus broken by original sin, though, we all continually struggle with cultivating this kind of faith.

Similarly, our relationship with our spouse should be one of great love for and confidence in one another. We are called to be each other’s “helpmate,” not each other’s persecutor. Unfortunately, because we are in such an intimate relationship with our spouse, we see one another’s flaws and can find ourselves criticizing each other’s habits, quirks, and choices, becoming increasingly irritated by these things. Instead of gently requesting changes or graciously accepting constructive criticism from our spouse, we engage in verbal battles, with phrases like, “Would you knock it off,” “You’re so annoying,” “I’m so disappointed in you,” and other impatient jabs. Instead of being a helpmate to each other, we slowly start to build an emotional divide and increase the other person’s fear of annoying, disappointing, or angering us. One common negative result of this, can be an increase in lying to one another in order to avoid these ‘punishments’ from our spouse. Unfortunate and misguided, lying only makes things exponentially worse.

Just as our relationship with God needs to be built on a constant striving to love and trust Him more deeply, our relationship with our spouse needs the firm foundation of mutual respect, a self-sacrificial desire to promote the good of the other, and a firm commitment to help our spouse be his or her best self. There will always be fear in a broken world, but the more we practice self-giving love in marriage, the more we build faith in one another as well as in God. This faith, in turn, can greatly calm our marital fears.

ACTION STEP: This week, work on being a helpmate that is gentle, understanding, open to suggestions, and willing to be more self-giving.